A Life Undone -- A special report.; Portrait of a White House Aide Ensnared by His Perfectionism

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.
To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems.
Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

Vincent W. Foster Jr. was in the middle of another oppressive White House workday on Thursday, July 15, when a friend from Little Rock, Ark., stopped by and explained how the people back home pictured his Washington life.

"They think all you folks up here sit at the right hand of the President," said the friend, Skip Rutherford, a former Clinton campaign aide. He told Mr. Foster they imagined him having lunch at the mess with the President each day, adjourning at 5 for cocktails on the Truman balcony, and spending weekends cruising the Potomac or relaxing at Camp David, Md.

This fantasy of glamour washed over a man having one of the worst weeks of his life. Mr. Foster, the deputy White House counsel, was seeking the names of psychiatrists but worrying that they might record his remarks on tape. He was nervous about a possible Congressional inquiry into the White House travel office and looking to hire a lawyer. He was talking to his wife about his impulse to resign and return to the Little Rock life that had brought them prosperity, comfort and respect. Disbelief in Capital

He leaned back in his White House chair and gave a characteristically wry smile. "People do think that, don't they?" he said. "Boy do they have it wrong."

Five days later, Mr. Foster walked out of his West Wing office and told his secretary to help herself to the M & M's he had left on his lunch tray; he then drove to a Virginia park and shot himself in the head.

In the month that has passed, the capital has been seized with disbelief: how could a man who personified stability, the man President Clinton called "the Rock of Gibraltar" have taken his own life? Mr. Foster's intellect and judgment had so impressed his White House colleagues that they tossed out his name last spring as a potential nominee to the Supreme Court.

This account of Mr. Foster's last days is drawn from extensive interviews with White House officials, police investigators, longtime friends, and members of the extended Foster family. Some of them spoke about the situation for the first time, on the condition of anonymity, to correct what they called misleading impressions of earlier accounts.

The portrait that emerges is at least partly that of a man stalked by his own impossible standards of perfection, trapped in a world where he could no longer seem to meet them.

"This kind of perfectionism and purity is a kind of two-edged sword," said Dr. Jerome Motto, a psychiatrist at the University of California at San Francisco and an expert on suicide. "On the one hand, it makes for fantastic performance. On the other hand, it can cut you up pretty badly." Calls for Help

But no one, not even Mr. Foster's wife, Lisa, or his three children, could know how badly he was being cut. When he suggested to his wife, the week before his death, that they return home, she suggested that they press on through the end of the year.

When he told his sister, Sheila Anthony, an assistant attorney general, that he was thinking of seeing a psychiatrist, she encouraged him to do so, took the research upon herself, and gave him several names. But Mr. Foster decided to wait until he returned from a weekend away, hoping that the rest might restore him.

Mr. Foster and his wife traveled to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sojourned at an inn, swam, boated and ate crabs with friends. He went for a jog and praised the sound of quiet and the feel of the wind.

By Monday he was lauding the escape to his colleagues and calling a longtime family doctor in search of anti-depressants. He took one Monday night, awoke cheerful Tuesday morning, and congratulated his son on hitting a home run in a softball game.

He dropped his children at their jobs and drove through the White House gates, apparently with the gun that would end his life. He put in a half-day's work and left without really saying goodbye. Before Washington Life in Arkansas: Full of Success

His friends were uncertain whether he would choose Washington. "I was perhaps mildly surprised when the President told me," said Thomas F. McLarty 3d, the White House chief of staff.

Mr. Foster had had little involvement in the Presidential campaign and a well-known distaste for the limelight. He was earning nearly $300,000 a year as a corporate litigator, basking in professional acclaim, with time left over for his family, exercise and board work at the repertory theater.

He seems to have known only success. "I never saw a professional setback," recalled one of his former partners at the Rose law firm. "Never. Not even a tiny one."

But his ties to Bill Clinton dated back four decades to their boyhoods in Hope, Ark.; his friendship with Hillary Rodham Clinton, his Little Rock law partner, was if anything even stronger.

Mr. Foster signed on, laboring at a frenzied pace through November and December as he helped his friends form a government. Before leaving Little Rock in January, he presented his secretary, Lorraine Cline, with an inscribed copy of a photographer's book on the Clinton campaign.

"I will always be there if you need me, as you have been for me," he wrote. "Love, Vince."

Though operating for the first time in a national arena, Mr. Foster was quick to win his colleagues' admiration. "Wow, this guy is really good," one early skeptic remembers thinking, surprised at the piercing intelligence of a man sporting the credentials only of small-city lawyer and Presidential friend.

His talent seemed so abundant that, amid the brainstorming about possible Supreme Court nominees, colleagues asked: Why not Vince himself? It was clearly too soon, "but we certainly discussed that idea that at some point he might be on the President's list, yes," said someone involved in the process.

When Mr. Foster returned home in May, he seemed so happy that Ms. Cline began to cry, thinking he would never move back. Early Capital Days Criticism Took Toll On Exacting Man

Mr. Foster was accustomed to a brand of meticulous research the White House pace did not allow, and to a courtliness the political culture did not return. Assure that your adversaries "leave with dignity," he told a graduating class at the University of Arkansas Law School this spring, in an articulation of his credo.

"Treat every pleading, every brief, every contract, every letter, every daily task as if your career will be judged on it," he said. Yet, seemingly unaware of the contradiction, he also implored them not to miss a single family moment, since "the office can wait."

Perhaps in the slower, smaller, gentler world of Little Rock, Mr. Foster could accommodate his exacting standards. He collected wine, baked bread, devoted himself to his family and was still voted the state's top lawyer; he saw himself, and was seen by others, as a man with an unblemished reputation.

"Dents to the reputation in the legal profession are irreparable" he told the law graduates, though he was soon to accumulate what he perceived as dents of his own.

The first came from his minor involvement in the White House's decision to dismiss the employees of its travel office, while saying the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating possible kickbacks from plane charter companies.

The decision quickly backfired, when reporters learned that a friend of the President might benefit financially from the travel office reshuffling. Critics asserted that Presidential aides had coerced the F.B.I. into opening the inquiry, and the White House was forced to begin investigating itself.

The investigation that concluded on July 2 reported that Mr. Foster's own behavior had been prudent and proper, though it mildly admonished his former law partner and subordinate, William Kennedy 3d. Mr. Foster grew troubled at his failure to protect his longtime friend, whom he thought was being treated unfairly. As the investigation dragged on, Mr. Foster told one family member that he himself might be removed from his post.

Other problems were arising. "Who is Vincent Foster?" asked The Wall Street Journal, in a June 17 editorial that ridiculed him for, among other thing, refusing to supply a photograph of himself. A week later, in "Vincent Foster's Victory," the newspaper was accusing him of "imperial overstretch" and of allowing "hubris to smother mere principle." A Source of Humor

The editorials arose from Mr. Foster's defense, in court, of the Administration's right to hold closed meetings of its health care group -- a position The Journal claimed to support. The newspaper's contradictory complaints were a source of joking in the office with Bernard W. Nussbaum, the White House counsel, mock-complaining that he deserved some attention, too. Mr. Foster would smile in response, but the wounds went deeper than anyone knew.

The Journal was the paper most read by his corporate clients back in Little Rock. "The WSJ editors lie without consequence," he wrote in a dark note composed days before his death.

He was working 12-hour days and weekends, spending at least one long weekend workday with his papers in bed, with the shades drawn against the summer heat. In retrospect, Mr. Nussbaum found him "blue," and Mr. McLarty thought him "not quite as chipper."

One day his eldest son, Vincent 3d, a senior in college, told him that if people like him and Mr. McLarty were not good enough to run the Government, no one was. Mr. Foster nodded, but he did not brighten. Final Week Calling for Help From His Family

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

When the work week of July 12 dawned, Mr. Foster was still concerned about the travel office. The General Accounting Office was investigating and some members of Congress were threatening to do the same. "He said, 'You really have to make some decisions about how to move forward,' " Mr. Nussbaum recalled.

That day he contacted his brother-in-law, Beryl Anthony Jr., a former Congressman, for recommendations about hiring a lawyer.

He soon broached the subject of psychiatric help with Ms. Anthony, his sister. Both of them knew of a relative who had suffered a bout of severe depression but recovered with the help of therapy and drugs.

On Wednesday, July 14, The Journal attacks resumed, with an editorial complaining that the "Rose clique from Little Rock" had "shown a willingness to cut many legal corners."

A few days later, Mr. Foster was wondering aloud whether the Rose lawyers were hurting the Administration. "He said it looks like we've become liabilities here," Mr. Nussbaum said. "I said that's crazy. He took it seriously, though, obviously." Longing for Home

Mr. Foster told his wife they might be better off back in Little Rock. But he had quit his law firm and been forced to resign from his country club to protest its racial exclusivity. His family had just joined him a month earlier. When he could not sleep one evening, she suggested that he write down the things that were bothering him.

That may have been what prompted him to compose the unsettling note discovered in a briefcase after his death, torn into 27 pieces, with one more missing.

"I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience, and overwork," he began, continuing with gloomy, even paranoid prose. "The FBI lied." "The GOP lied." The "Usher's Office plotted." The press was "covering up."

Late Friday afternoon, Mr. Foster grabbed an electronic pager, joined his wife, and headed for the Eastern Shore, where they toured Tilghman Island, and the towns of Oxford and St. Michael.

Late Saturday afternoon, they received a call from Michael H. Cardozo, a Washington lawyer who had held the job of deputy White House counsel under President Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Cardozo and his wife, Harolyn, were five minutes away, at an estate on the Tred Avon River built by Mrs. Cardozo's father, Nathan Landow, a wealthy Democratic Party contributor. Webster L. Hubbell, another former Rose partner, now serving as Associate Attorney General, was there with his wife, Suzanne.

The Fosters soon joined them, with Mr. Foster presenting his hosts with a bottle of white wine. The three couples sat at an outdoor table, commenting on the beauty of the sunset.

Dinner followed inside, and afterward Mr. Foster helped load the dishwasher, laughing as the table banter continued. The Fosters returned the next morning for a day of swimming, boating, sunshine and tennis. Pam Shriver, the tennis star, was there.

Mr. Foster went for a run.

"I said, 'While you're jogging you should listen to the ducks and the water and the wind, and that's how you know you're away from Washington,' " said someone who accompanied him part of the way. "He said, 'Yeah, it really feels good.' "

At 8 P.M. after a crab dinner, the Fosters thanked their hosts and drove away looking happy. The pager had not gone off. Closing Days Foster Didn't Show Signs of Stress

The Journal was weighing in again on Monday morning, when Mr. Foster arrived at 8 A.M., as another editorial questioned "the mores on display from the Rose alumni."

If it bothered him, Mr. Foster did not let it show. As the morning staff meeting adjourned, a harried colleague wandered into Mr. Foster's office, complaining that seven tasks all needed to be finished first.

Mr. Foster told a White House friend that he had met Ms. Shriver and that the getaway had been great. He called his Little Rock doctor, Larry S. Watkins, who phoned a Washington pharmacy with a prescription for an anti-depressant.

Mrs. Foster was cooking scallops and spaghetti sauce when he arrived at his Georgetown home at about 8, and the phone rang shortly thereafter. It was President Clinton. Mr. Foster took the call alone, upstairs.

White House officials have given only vague accounts of the phone call. "They talked for 15 or 20 minutes," said Mr. McLarty, who would characterize the conversation only as "a good visit."

Mr. Foster had already wondered, with his wife and his boss, about his usefulness in Washington. Did he broach the subject with the President? "No, he did not," said Ricki Seidman, a White House spokeswoman. "I am absolutely certain." Nothing Askew

If the conversation brought any unhappiness, Mr. Foster did not show it. He walked downstairs and told his family that the President wanted him to come watch a movie. "Hillary's out of town," he said, laughing. "I think he's lonely."

He ate dinner and took 50 milligrams of the anti-depressant, Deseryl (trazadone hydrochloride) before going to bed. That is only a third of the initial recommended dosage, and it is unlikely to have had much effect.

Neither his family nor his colleagues noticed anything askew Tuesday morning. When Mr. Foster arrived at work at about 8:30, he found a happy gathering in Mr. Nussbaum's office as Judge Louis J. Freeh awaited the Rose Garden ceremony where President Clinton would nominate him to head the F.B.I.

Attorney General Janet Reno was there, and she told an affectionate joke about Mr. Foster's role in screening her. She said she never quite knew she had passed the test until she was already on the job. Mr. Foster stood in the doorway and smiled.

When the ceremony ended, Mr. Foster returned from the Rose Garden and fielded a phone call from a former law partner without betraying a hint of disturbance. The partner asked about Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Hubbell, and Mr. Foster replied that "everybody was O.K."

Mr. Nussbaum was in his office, next door, switching television channels with a remote control. On one channel, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sailing through her confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court; on another, Mr. Freeh was drawing praise.

Mr. Foster walked in. "I said, 'Take a look, Vince, back-to-back homers,' " Mr. Nussbaum said. "Great for the President, great for the country, and we helped make it possible."

"He didn't say anything," Mr. Nussbaum said. "I said, 'Vince is something up?' He said, 'No, I just heard that you had the TV on. I wanted to see what you're watching.' "

Mr. Foster left the White House at about 1, telling his secretary, "I'll be back." It is unlikely, though not impossible, that he returned home; his son Brugh, a high school senior, was there all day but neither saw nor heard him from his room in the basement. His wife was at charity lunch with Mr. McLarty's wife, Donna.

Mr. Foster's body was discovered at about 6 P.M., with his hand still gripping the 1913 Colt revolver he had inherited from his father, who passed away several years ago. Police investigators could say only that Mr. Foster had died sometime within the previous four hours.

Correction: August 27, 1993

A picture caption on Sunday about Vincent W. Foster Jr., the White House aide whose death was ruled a suicide, misstated the date his body was found. It was July 20, not July 21.

A version of this biography; special report; chronology appears in print on August 22, 1993, on Page 1001001 of the National edition with the headline: A Life Undone -- A special report.; Portrait of a White House Aide Ensnared by His Perfectionism. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe